Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins was the No. 1 recruit in the country in 2013. / Photo courtesy of Kansas Athletics

by Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY Sports

by Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY Sports

LAWRENCE, Kan. - When the world is watching your every move, fans are tracking your flights so they can greet you at the airport and you can't escape autograph hounds on campus ‚?¶ how do you get away?

How do you reconcile being a normal college kid - and supposedly the greatest basketball prospect since LeBron James? A quiet teenage boy - and already the projected No. 1 pick in the 2014 NBA draft?

Says fellow Kansas freshman Wayne Selden: "That's all he does. I go in his room, and he's talking to the TV screen. That's what he does. That's his thing."

The rest of the time, basketball is his thing.

A 6-8 wing, Wiggins has received rave reviews from nearly everyone who has watched him play, including those in the NBA who salivate over his pro potential and raw athleticism. He wowed college coaches on the AAU circuit, and he averaged 23.4 points and 11.2 rebounds a game at Huntington (W.Va.) Prep last season. The consensus top prospect in the 2013 class, Wiggins had his pick of elite basketball programs.

He chose Kansas over North Carolina (where he'd have been coached by Hall of Famer Roy Williams), Kentucky (where John Calipari had assembled the best recruiting class since the Fab Five) and Florida State (where his parents went).

Jayhawks coach Bill Self says Wiggins is the most-hyped player Kansas has had, probably, since Danny Manning, who won a national title at Kansas and went No. 1 overall in the 1988 draft.

"We never talked to Andrew about being a one-and-done," Self says. "We just talked to him about being a college kid, coming in and trying hard, helping us, and we're going to help him by putting him in a position to showcase himself. ‚?¶ It was always unspoken that we understood, if he did what he was supposed to do, we won't have him here on campus very long.

"The thing about Andrew that's common with all 18-year-olds is he's just a kid. He wants to be a kid. I don't think he's got the growing up fast-forwarding just yet. I think he's realizing that his college stint could potentially not be that long, and he wants to experience college."

So, here, on the brink of realizing his long-held potential, he still clings at times to anything that feels normal. For now, that's video games. He plays Call of Duty because that's what he's best at, and the only teammate he'll concede is good is Perry Ellis.

"It's two different worlds," Selden says. "When you're on the court, when you're talking to media, it's a different world than when you're just a teenager. You're in your room playing video games; you're not thinking, 'I'm a basketball player.'"

Athletic parents paved way

The secret to Wiggins' otherworldly athleticism is that there is none. Scientifically speaking, he is what happens when a former NBA player and an Olympic track star have a child.

Mitchell Wiggins and Marita Payne met at Florida State, where Mitchell averaged 23 points and nine rebounds and Marita won two individual NCAA titles in the 400 meters. Both are in FSU's Hall of Fame.

After college, Mitchell was picked 23rd overall in the 1983 NBA draft and bounced around four NBA teams over the course of seven years. (He was suspended for 2 ¬Ĺ years for failing a drug test in 1987.) Mitchell played professional basketball overseas into the early 2000s.

Marita competed in two Olympics for Canada, winning two silver medals in the 1984 Games as a member of Canada's 400- and 1,600-meter relays. Near the Wiggins' home in Vaughan, Ontario, a Toronto suburb, there's a park named after her - Marita Payne Park.

Quiet and unassuming, Marita doesn't act like the big deal that she was. Nick, her second-oldest son, said though his family grew up right by the park and he knew it was named after his mother, it didn't really hit him until he was in middle school just how successful she had been.

But that athletic ability ran through their children's veins from a young age. Andrew's two older brothers, Mitch Jr. and Nick, currently play college basketball. (Nick is about two hours away at Wichita State.) Andrew's two younger sisters play basketball and run track. His oldest sister bucks the trend; she's a stylist.

"They basically groomed the way for us," Nick says. "When we were younger, we watched them. You see that, you want to be just like your parents or better. It was always a goal.

"We always wanted to be athletes. ‚?¶ We just wanted to follow in their footsteps."

Andrew's parents knew what recruitment would be like for their son. They knew what to value during visits. They knew what he'd need to do to get to the NBA.

Because Andrew reclassified last October and was immediately named the top recruit of the 2013 class, his recruiting process appeared frenzied. But in reality, coaches struggled to get close to him.

Even Self says it was difficult for him to build a relationship with Wiggins. It was difficult for everyone.

"He was one of those guys who didn't need to be stroked, didn't need to be told how great he was every day," Self says. "All he wanted to do was gather information, and when he gathered information and was comfortable, he made a decision."

Coaches see a lot of Marita in Andrew. They're both laid-back. They survey the situation before speaking, appearing quiet until they're comfortable.

And as for all the attention?

"She's been through so much of that, and she's kept this kid so grounded," Townsend says. "It's not that big a deal.

It had been gathering steam for a while, particularly after he moved from Canada to the USA for prep school and better exposure. But the legend of Andrew Wiggins grew the most in a packed gym in Augusta, S.C., last summer.

With the eyes of the college basketball world upon him - every prominent coach and assistant crammed in a standing-room-only crowd - Wiggins outplayed Julius Randle, then considered one of the top recruits of the 2013 class.

Those close to Wiggins say he's particularly looking forward to playing Duke on Nov. 12, because he'll have a chance to go head-to-head with another elite prospect in his age group, Jabari Parker. Parker had been considered the No. 1 recruit in the 2013 class until Wiggins reclassified.

"When he plays against those guys who are perceived to be at his level, he dominates matchups," says Fulford, his high school coach. "It's an extra motivation that he has."

The flip side of that is criticism that Wiggins plays hard only in big games, not all the time.

"I think some people mistake how smooth he is with laziness," Fulford says. "He doesn't play 150 miles an hour all the time because he doesn't have to. But at the end of the game, he still has 27 points and 15 rebounds."

By the end of last summer, there weren't many skeptics. Wiggins was 6-8 and moved with the speed and grace of a 6-footer. Highlights of his spin moves and dunking made their rounds on the Internet. Other players couldn't believe his jumping ability.

"There are only a few guys like that in every class that you just look at it and say, 'He would fit in for anybody, no matter who was recruiting him,'" Self says.

Wiggins was one, and everyone knew it.

Buoyed by his parents, Wiggins never let himself get overwhelmed by his recruitment. He kept it simple when coaches asked whom to talk to: just him, his mom and his dad. He told everyone he'd be taking the process slow. He put off most of his official visits until late February and March. Coaches were left in the dark, wondering where they stood.

"I'd text him after games," says Townsend, Kansas' lead recruiter on Wiggins. "It'd be real short. 'Thanks, Coach.' He didn't give me any substance at all."

But there were clues.

During his visit to Lawrence, Wiggins asked Townsend about his clothes. He'd been a Nike kid all his life, so would he have to wear Adidas all the time? To class? "You can wear whatever you want," Townsend said he told him, laughing before the worrying started. Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida State were Nike schools.

April brought a call out of the blue. Wiggins asked Townsend if he committed to Kansas, would he have to come to summer school? Townsend said no but it'd be great if he did since the rest of the team would come. Wiggins was thinking about spending the summer at home with his family. "After this year, I probably will never get to do it again," he told Townsend.

Those two questions were so detailed, so peculiar. Townsend had a feeling. Wow, he's thinking about us.

Yet Wiggins gave no other indication to any Kansas coaches that he was leaning their way, even as his decision day loomed. Wiggins didn't announce until May 14, one day before the end of the regular signing period.

"Everyone was getting kind of frustrated that he was dragging it out," Fulford says. "He wasn't going to let the Twitter world and all the media push him into a decision. It was going to be on his own terms, when his parents could be in town, for him to do it."

Fulford prepared a small ceremony at the school. He made sure only one news reporter would be allowed in - the local beat writer - because this was a moment Wiggins wanted to share with his family, friends and teammates most. Meanwhile, the outside world waited for the news.

"Who would have thought you get a lot more attention by deflecting all the attention?" Self says.

Townsend's phone rang three minutes before the announcement was supposed to start. A local Rivals.com reporter asked, "How long did you guys know?"

Wiggins' Twitter biography defines him as an "average kid trying to make it." His more than 104,000 Twitter followers think he's a little better than that, and they tell him.

Wiggins knows, too, what people say and write about him. He chooses to avoid it.

"When you first start off being a high-profile athlete for your age, you think about all that stuff, you watch all that stuff," Wiggins says. "As you get older and start playing more, you realize that's just part of the game. That's just going to happen. Nothing you can do to stop it. I just ignore it. I don't look at it."

Naadir Tharpe, a junior guard, says he likes that Wiggins "stays within himself."

Says roommate Tyler Self, "If you're talking to him and didn't know a thing about him, you wouldn't know he was the No.1 recruit."

Games haven't started yet, and Wiggins knows he hasn't done anything at the collegiate level. When he does play, he knows he'll have ups and downs.

No one is expecting perfection.

"He's not the next LeBron - he's the first Andrew," Self says. "That's what I think is unfair. People are putting probably expectations on him that would be a lot for any 18-year-old kid. He didn't ask for that."

Still, those expectations drive him. They push him toward athletic greatness. They're what will force him - someday - to stop simply being a kid.

"I just want to (fill) the shoes I've been given," Wiggins says.

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Nicole Auerbach, a national college basketball reporter for USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @NicoleAuerbach.